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This latest work features characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par